


knots someone else tied

by saffronHeliotrope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, dysfunctional drunk pale feelings jam ahoy, unrequited Dave/John, with shades of Dersecest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffronHeliotrope/pseuds/saffronHeliotrope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s a bit late in the evening for a social call, don’t you think?”</p>
<p>“Never too late for a visit to my lovely ectotwin. I wanted to wrap myself in your presence like a chilly, slightly prickly blanket.”</p>
<p>He’s enunciating his words very carefully, but as he slides unsteadily inside, she realizes that he’s drunk, and more than just a little. She says, “Ectotwins aren’t even a thing.  John and Jade made that up.” He makes a little <i>snerk</i> and lands a kiss on her cheek that’s just shy of bruising. “And just how much have you had to drink?”</p>
<p>“Not nearly enough,” he says, weaving his way into the kitchen, leaving puddles in his footprints.</p>
            </blockquote>





	knots someone else tied

**Author's Note:**

> _and I won't be your last dance, just your last goodnight_  
>  _every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied_  
>  -Josh Ritter, [Kathleen](http://youtu.be/BK58i2r6dc0)

It’s almost two in the morning when Rose hears a jingle of keys in the hall outside her apartment. She looks up from her book, surprised at the time, surprised at herself that she hasn’t yet gone to bed, sliding as she is through liminal stages of hyper-aware midnight wakefulness and hazy stupor.

Outside, rain is sheeting down over the windowpanes, but her apartment is warm and softly glowing -- book-lined, lamp-lit. She tents open her book on the coffee table and gets up, stocking feet cold on the floor. Kanaya is spending the night at Karkat’s -- the third night this week, and if Rose were the jealous type she’d be worried. It might be Sollux, stopping by for some of the strangely acerbic with-benefits business they’ve had a bit of lately. Yes, probably Sollux, she decides, nearing the door, but then she hears the sound of keys hitting the floor, and a familiar low voice says, “Fuck.”

She turns the bolt and wrenches the door open, and Dave is slumped against the frame, drenched and dripping with icy rainwater. There are drops running off his hair and down his shades. “Rosie. Sweetheart. The delight of my eyes.”

She folds her arms. “It’s a bit late in the evening for a social call, don’t you think?”

“Never too late for a visit to my lovely ectotwin. I wanted to wrap myself in your presence like a chilly, slightly prickly blanket.”

He’s enunciating his words very carefully, but as he slides unsteadily inside, she realizes that he’s drunk, and more than just a little. She says, “Ectotwins aren’t even a thing.  John and Jade made that up.” He makes a little _snerk_ and lands a kiss on her cheek that’s just shy of bruising. “And just how much have you had to drink?”

“Not nearly enough,” he says, weaving his way into the kitchen, leaving puddles in his footprints.

“Can I get you some water, then? Or at the very most, coffee?”

“Pssshhhh,” he says eloquently. He’s already managed to find the right cabinet and surfaces with a bottle of bourbon, and makes an immediate beeline for the sofa.  She thinks of upholstery and water stains and moves to intercept, somehow windmilling him out of his sopping coat as he slips bonelessly past her. Unperturbed, he collapses in a damp heap on the couch, and she sighs and moves her favorite afghan out from behind his head. Some things aren’t worth fighting over. His coat goes over the doorknob where it can drip harmlessly on the entryway tiles.

He pulls the stopper from the bottle and takes a long slug as she perches beside him. She worries that he’ll spill -- the bottle is heavy, and definitely not designed for sipping -- but even impaired as he is, he’s still precise in his movements, finely calibrated. She thinks of ten different things to say, most of them accusatory, but seeing the beaten slump of his shoulders she settles on, “Is it John?”

He grimaces through the alcoholic burn. “John who.”

One pale eyebrow arches. “Dave.”

“Nah. I’m happy for him. Last I saw him he had a lapful of squirming Vriska. Best birthday present a growing boy could ask for. I decided the place wasn’t big enough for the three of us plus that small a dress so I fucked right the hell off.”

She watches him critically, but he’s impassive as always behind the shades. “So you did what any red-blooded American male would do and you went and got trashed at a bar. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t find some pretty young thing to go home and have sloppy makeouts with on _his_ couch.”

“And deprive you of the joy of my company? My dear sister, you wound me.”

“Not really your sister,” she says. “ _Sister_ implies a shared upbringing, with familial history and socialization in common, not just some dubious genetic connection that may or may not actually exist given the unreliability of our guardians and their sordid shadowy histories. Also, don’t drink _all_ the bourbon. It’s Kanaya’s. How about I get you a glass?”

“Don’t even think about it, Lalonde,” he says, winding his free arm securely around her waist. He’s slumping down, his head in the vicinity of her shoulder, so she gives in to the gravitational pull of Dave plus couch and allows him to pull her down with him. “Anyway, the problem with the pretty young things in bars is that they’re too smooth. Not enough derpy glasses and cowlicks. Not enough buckteeth. And the problem with bars is that they always close before I get drunk enough that the idea of going home with any of the young things is palatable.”

“Still saving yourself for your one true love, I see,” she says, taking the bottle from him with some little struggle.

“That’s me,” he agrees. “Pining like a motherfucker. Pining for the fjords.”

She snorts delicately. “The Egbertian fjords?” He’s listing hard to starboard now, so she raises her arm to give him room and he slumps against her side.

“No others. No fjords can compare. Nine out of ten fjordophiles agree.”

“That’s not a word,” she says.

“Shut up and give me back the booze.”

She takes a sip and hands the bottle back. The bourbon is smoky and dark and burns cleanly going down. She shouldn’t let him drink much more, for both their sakes in the morning.

“Dave, he’s straight,” she says, more gently than she means to, perhaps not as gently as she should. He doesn’t say anything. “Demonstrably. Maybe you shouldn’t have moved in with him. Maybe it would be easier if you had a little more distance.”

“Rose. Please. I’m a Strider. We thrive on pain and conflict. It’d be weird if I _didn’t_ live with someone who could stomp the shit out of me on a daily basis.”

“Except instead of fighting you with anime swords, he routinely stomps the shit out of your heart. You don’t even defend yourself, much less fight back. That’s excellent strifing technique right there. Your brother would be so proud.”

He makes a small hurt noise that goes straight through her. It was a home shot, and she regrets it. _Always a little too far,_ she berates herself. _Always pushing._

Penitent, she combs her fingers through his damp hair, sweeps it off his forehead, rubs her thumb over the downturned corner of his mouth. _I hate seeing you hurting_ , she wants to say, or _don’t throw your love away where it’s not returned._

Too straightforward, too close to the surface. Those are things that John might say, or Jade. She settles for, “You deserve better.”

He grunts. “That’s a goddamn lie and we both know it.”

She silently takes the bottle back and drinks, and when he doesn’t grab for it again she sets it down out of reach. He wraps his other arm around her, and she turns her hips on the couch, lying back against the armrest so that he can curl half on top of her, loose-limbed and floppy. His head is pillowed on her chest, long legs tangled with hers, and he’s still cold from the rain. Her arms curl neatly around his wiry shoulders.

The apartment is quiet except for the sound of the rain against the windows. His shades are digging in below her collarbone, so she gently removes them. He doesn’t protest. She folds them and sets them on the coffee table. Without them, and quiet for once, he looks achingly young and bone-tired. His eyelashes brush against her skin, and his sadness is heavy on her chest.

She rubs circles between his shoulderblades and thinks about growing up, about brothers, about all the things that have left the beautiful, brilliant man in her arms a little twisted, a little broken. About how she’s as fractured as he is, cracks in the glazing, iced over, unable to give him the respite he needs.

She also knows the pure sunlight that is the friendship of an intact soul, because she yearns toward it too. Perhaps in a different way, with different desires, but still, she knows.

She finds herself wondering, not for the first time, if they were to try fitting their brokenness together, could they approximate a whole?

Her strokes on his back have grown languid. Responding to her touch, he holds her a little tighter, _hmmm_ s appreciatively. “Girls are soft,” he says into her cleavage.

“Yes, some of us,” she agrees. His hand is flat on her stomach, plucking idly at her loose sweater, which has already slipped low. He shifts slightly, rubbing his cheek against the soft skin, nosing her sweater lower. His stubble scratches, not unpleasantly.

“So this is what she has that I don’t.”

“I imagine so,” she says mildly.

“Weird,” he says. With a deliberate air of not-quite-sober experimentation, he raises his head a fraction, presses a kiss against the side of her breast. She bites her lip to keep from laughing at him -- she loves that he gets more careful when he’s drunk, not less -- but her heart rate picks up just a tick when he does it again.

His lips are soft, his mouth the tiniest bit open, and there’s such a contrast between that warmth and his cold fingers, which are now on her leg above the tops of her high socks. Unconsciously she tightens her grip on the back of his shirt. He’s peppering little sucking kisses all along the top of her bra and down into her cleavage now, and the pressure of his body is nice -- really nice -- and she finds herself trying not to arch up against him.

“Dave,” she says softly. Not a warning, just an acknowledgement.

He raises his head and meets her eyes, then with a surge out of nowhere he pushes himself up and kisses her.

It’s surprisingly sweet, almost chaste, even when he slides his tongue softly past her lips. He tastes like whiskey and smoke. She lets one hand twine up into his pale hair. _Well, that escalated,_ she thinks distantly. He moves slowly against her, and she holds herself still, half afraid that she’ll spook him.

His fingers slide higher up on one slim thigh, under the hem of her skirt, and when his fingertips graze the silken edge of her underwear in the hollow of her hip, she can’t help herself -- her breath catches on the inhale.

He freezes, then slowly pulls back an inch from her face. There’s a long moment of silence. “Shit,” he says finally.

_Stupid, traitor body,_ she thinks. “And just what exactly were you planning to do with that?” She gestures down with the slightest incline of her head, pleased that her voice doesn’t even tremble.

Dave groans and pulls back from under her skirt. “Dammit. I don’t even know. Christ, Rose, I’m sorry.” He flops back down beside her and covers his face with one hand. “I’m such an asshole.”

“No,” she says softly, relenting. “Just unhappy. It wouldn’t have helped, though.”

“I know.” He takes a shuddering breath, lets it out slowly. “Jesus, don’t ever tell Bro I lost a game of straight chicken. He’ll fucking disown me.”

She smiles, pulls his arm back around her so that he’s cuddled up against her again. “I’d have been taking advantage anyway, with you impaired as you are,” she says lightly.

He breathes out in the circle of her arms and she feels the tension go slowly out of him. “Well, my maidenly virtue thanks you,” he says.

“He loves you, you know,” she says abruptly. “John. More than Vriska. More than anyone, I think. Even if it’s not the way you want him to love you.”

“That almost makes it ok. Not quite, but almost.” His voice is growing heavy. “As St. Francis of Assizi famously said, ‘tis better to have loved and not been able to bone your best friend than never loved at all.”

She laughs quietly, and feels his cheek curve into a smile against her skin. “I think I read that in a different translation,” she says, and kisses the top of his head. His eyes are closed.

Later, when he starts to snore softly and she decides she doesn’t want him drooling all over her second-favorite bra, she’ll heave him off the couch and steer him to her bed while he mumbles nonsense about dance parties on the moon. They’ll both feel awful in the morning, and there will be arguments about who has to get up and make the coffee. For now, though, she listens to his breath, counts the time by the heartbeat thrumming through his ribcage, and lets him sleep.


End file.
